Athletes engage in different kind of sports and compete with each other for entertainment. The competition encourages the athletes to continuously hone their athletic skills by training, wherein the athletes employ the services of trained professionals/coaches, or may undergo self-training. The major purpose of both coaching and self-training is to overcome bad habits and learn correct techniques of a particular sport. Different sports require different skill sets, for example, sports like cricket, basketball, baseball, tennis and the like require particular coordination in the movement of upper limbs.
In cricket, certain bowling actions by the bowler in course of ball delivery are undesired and are commonly referred to as “throwing” or “chucking”. Throwing is said to occur when during the bowling action, the bowler during the latter stage of a ball delivery, just before the release of ball, extends the bowling arm beyond a permissible threshold. During the latter stage of the ball delivery, only the rotation of the shoulder or wrist movement is desired to impart velocity to the ball not the elbow. The general bodies governing the sport of cricket have made the throw-like bowling action illegal and one of such general body, International Cricket Council (ICC), has set the permissible threshold of 15 degrees of extending the bowling arm for all bowlers.
To differentiate between the illegal bowling and the legal bowling actions, the change in the elbow angle must be measured during the latter stage of the ball delivery, from the bowling stage when the upper bowling arm reaches the level of the shoulder height and is parallel to the ground, referred herein as the “start of action,” (SOA) to the stage at which the ball is released from the hand of the bowler, this stage is referred herein as “ball release” stage. Some threshold, such as, fifteen degrees in the change of elbow angle is tolerated to allow natural flexing of the elbow joint during the course of legal ball delivery. The bowler is however completely allowed for flexing or rotating the wrist during the normal course of ball delivery.
The athletes may intentionally extend their arm during latter stage of ball delivery for adding excess pace to the ball, or an athlete may have naturally developed bad habits during the training. Thus, the supervision of a coach becomes essential for avoiding such bad habits and learning the correct techniques of bowling and further honing the skills for improving the athletic performance. However, such professional services of the coach may not be available or are very expensive. Moreover, while training in a group, the coach may not have enough time to closely supervise each trainee. Even in the presence of a coach, such extension may not be detectable via a naked eye. In the absence of proper coaching, the trainee may develop wrong techniques. Thus, a need exists for a device that may allow monitoring the motion of the arm including the change in elbow angles, and provides feedback about the bowling action. Presently, biomechanics labs are used to assess the illegal bowling actions of athletes. Such labs are expensive, complex, and are not easily accessible.
Thus, there is a need for a portable device that may monitor the arm movements of a bowler during the bowling action in cricket. Such device would allow a bowler to self-monitor their training regimes and allow coaches or umpires to detect illegal bowling action during the training or a competition.